


The Only Piece That You Get

by alexiel_neesan



Series: Paradise City [3]
Category: DCU
Genre: Driving, Fever, Gen, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-26
Updated: 2010-05-26
Packaged: 2017-10-14 21:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexiel_neesan/pseuds/alexiel_neesan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there's Jason playing taxi, snow, and some more snow, and things thrown, and things said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Piece That You Get

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my partner in crime :D [](http://the-protagonist.livejournal.com/profile)[**the_protagonist**](http://the-protagonist.livejournal.com/) for the hand holding and the title.  '[Paradise City' from Guns n'Roses.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN3hH8LG4Yw)

  
Jason had stayed one more day in the dingy motel with the warm blankets - the road had been closed, right outside the town that the motel was signaling the entry of. His biggest worry of the day had been finding hot coffee and food not entirely dipped in grease, and not coming from pre-packaged rations either.

He had found both, after braving the outside world, in the only diner of the place. It had looked like half the town population had been in there too, tightly packed between the shotgun above the counter, a sign saying 'Margie' under it, various hunt pictures and a huge mutt of a dog who looked out of place in the ill-heated room. Jason had felt sweat pearling at the back of his neck in the five minutes after being seated in the booths against the windows, but his fingers had stayed too cold to bend properly. The dog had came to him, sniffing his boots and slobbering all over his thigh. It had been warm, its fur scratchy and heavy under Jason's fingers.

It had stayed there and warmed him when Jay waited for his food, when he ate, and when he waited for his coffee to go, hand trailing roughly and absently in the fur.

He had went back to the room, frozen to the bone, and the coffee not quite hot enough anymore. He spent the rest of the day dozing and not-watching TV, seeing the white falling outside and not thinking about anything, so far away from Gotham. Babs had been right - this particular observation did not make it into the e-mail containing his progression he sent her between two bouts of ridiculously brain-damaging day-time TV.

Babs was right about a lot of things. That made working for her... not annoying, really. It was a different sort of 'right about a lot of things' than B. had been. Babs smiled more, for one. She actually talked with her operatives, for another, though he did not exactly get how her Birds could stand the constantly open lines. He had given it a try, but it had involved not using the helmet because of conflicting technobabble thing. Jason did not like not using the helmet. It was useful, and much better than the cheap ones he had used before the multiverse.

He had not really known what to do when she had proposed for him to work for her. He hated that, hated being empty, literally being in between two worlds. He had always had a goal - being better, being harsher, saying 'take that, see how it can be!', make B. proud, make him hurt. He had his anger and his rage and his goals, it should have been enough, should have been all that mattered, strong enough to hold; he did not need his so-called family, did not need any of the capes, him alone against the world if it had to be that way. He certainly was strong enough not to be knocked down by words coming from a dead man who had gave up on him apparently even before he was made Robin. These words had not even been for him. They were for the him locked in Blackgate, who used sidekicks and Twitter and had a seriously shaky grasp on reality. Jason still had not seen him face to face, had just watched the odd surveillance videos from the prison.

He had learnt about Batgirl - Cassandra, and she was his _sister_ \- from Steph, and how she had split from the family, and how they had not done anything, and how she apparently wanted to keep it that way. He had learnt about the Outsiders. He wondered when the rest of the world outside Gotham had stopped making sense, not that he could recall that it had ever made any kind of sense inside Gotham, and if the multiverse crash had not affected more than anyone thought.

Sometimes, he missed being so angry it was all that kept him together. Right now... he missed Stephanie. He told himself it was because he was cold and tired and she made it better and easier to sleep.

About three days ago, Babs had intercepted a message coming from Drake. He probably had made it so it was easy to catch, because just calling would have been too easy and not Bat-like enough. Barbara had called Jay, had made him listen to the message, added that getting out of the city, outside his usual sphere of action, might be a good idea. Drake just rattled a bunch of numbers that formed a set of coordinates and a date. He was basically asking for a ride. Jason had not wanted to have anything to do with Drake, to be honest. He did not know why he had listened to his message. Did not know why he had listened to Babs. Did not know why he had went, braving cold and ugly-asses-end of nowhere and digusting coffee and not enough sleep, but there he was.

It was sometimes hard to keep straight all the sides trying to keep Gotham from shaking apart. Jason knew that the newer version of the Red Robin was not on talking terms with Dick's Batman and Robin. Steph had told him how Drake had left the city, and what for - according to her, he had not been quite himself. Jason agreed with her, with what he knew of his replacement. He had wondered why Drake had not called one of the Titans for picking him up, but then the tension was not just between Drake and Gotham - more like between Drake and the world.

Babs did not reply to his mail - he had not expected her to. It kept snowing. He pretended not to wait for Steph's phone call, just before she left on patrol.

The roads were still closed the next day, when he woke up before the white light.

Jay went on anyway. He saw, as he passed before the dinner of the previous day, the mutt sprawled behind the window.

The rendez-vous place was in the middle of a ghost town, several hours away from his last stop and half-way into the delicate process of being returned to the forests, hills and prairies it had came from. The tallest building that he could see still standing against the elements was a mining building, gleaming dully in the whiteness of the daylight.

Jason stopped at a safe distance, in the middle of the icy-hard road. Hiding was of no use, anyone there would have seen him coming from miles away on the only road; would have heard him coming too. He opened his winter coat to have better access to his guns, assured himself his knife was in place, put on the helmet before he finally got out of his car. Maybe it was paranoia, but Jason knew that if Drake wanted to kill him, really, really wanted to, he could. If Drake used what he had really learnt from Shiva, he could kill Jason with a flick of his wrist regardless of the differences of weapons of choice, height, weight and strength between them. Now as to why Drake would want to throw the rules he lived by by the window, Jason did not know, did not want to. It just never hurt to be prepared.

Plus, there was always the possibility there was not just Drake here, and that Not Just Drake was a hostile. More hostile than Drake was going to be, at any rate.

It was not snowing here. He walked up what had been the main street, some time ago. Now it was a collection of empty facades with boarded and broken windows and some surprisingly well-kept wooden houses, when trees were not growing out of them. There were many tracks in the snow, mostly animals', half-erased by blown powder. There were footsteps too, going through the derelict main street, though none of them as recent as his. There was not a trace of a motorized vehicle. He scanned his environment, the harsh white of the daylight turning everything black or white with the normal setting of the lenses. There was not enough noise.

He followed the more recent looking footsteps, cautiously. It led to what had been a hotel, if the sign half-buried under the snow of the street instead of being up in the air was to be trusted. It looked to be in good enough conditions to be used; at least the roof had not caved in, from what Jason could see, and some windows were still intact on the second floor. He pushed the door - forced it open, rather, half-frozen shut as it was. He did not say anything to announce his presence, trusting that the noise of the door would take care of that.

He certainly was not expecting a high-pitched yelp and noises of a gun. His own weapon was immediately in his hand and facing whoever was there not sounding like the Replacement at all.

The hall on which the door opened was dark, and small. There was snow on the stairs leading up - so maybe the roof was compromised, or the windows that were not facing the street. To the right, there was an old reception counter. To the left, facing his gun, there was an open doorway bathed in the moving light of a fireplace, and a girl with a gun. They looked at each other, aiming at each other, and Jay noticed how she was shaking, how she was bundled into ratty old blankets and how she had a proper stance. He frowned, not that it would be noticed.

"Who're you?" And _where the fuck is Drake_ , because Jay was no taxi driver, and could not have Drake asked the superclone if he wanted his girlfriend out of the snow?

"I-I could ask you the same thing!"

He liked girls like this, already liked her. She did not stop aiming at him too, one more point for her. But still, she posed little threat. Jason was more interested into what was into the room behind her - rather, who. A second figure bundled in ratty blankets appeared at this moment. Jason could see that said second figure was readying himself for a fight if he had to, even if he was leaning heavily against the door frame.

"What are you doing here, Red Hood?"

"Every time I see you, you look like shit or sound like it. That's some serious skills, Drake," Jason said, trying to go with as much contempt as he could, not correcting Drake on using an outdated name. Drake did not correct him on using the wrong family name either. He held up his arms, and put the gun back in the holster. The girl and Drake did a little non-verbal conversation thing, and she did not stop aiming at him. Jason grinned, trusting it would show in his body language. He should have been praised for his fucking acting skills.

"You didn't answer my question," said the Replacement. Drake literally looked like death warmed over, from what Jason could see of him. The cowl from the Red Robin's suit was pushed off his face, too long hair stuck to his forehead, and the two bright red splotches on his cheeks made him look much too young, too thin. The limited scans Jason could make with the helmet confirmed the fever.

"Oh, I don't know, maybe I was feeling like taking a holiday. I'm here to play taxi-cab, what do you think I would be doing?" Jason spat. At least it was not a physical fight, but he was beginning to freeze his ass off and the sooner Drake and the girl were in the car disguised as a battered pick-up, the sooner they would all be back in Gotham.

"Trying to finish the job? It was particularly sloppy of you, but you do show less and less attention to details and planning and things that don't use a gun or a very big explosion to be finished," said Drake. There was not enough ice-blue visible in his eyes.

Jason cocked his head slightly. He supposed the Replacement was talking about things the other Jason had done, but here was not the time nor the place for explaining. "Yeah, whatever. We got your message, Oracle sent me, and said O wants you very much back in Gotham for tactical reasons that includes trying to keep the city together."

"Tam, stand down." That took care of who was the girl, at least. The girl -Tam- bundled herself back in the blankets, gun disappearing, and stepped back into the room, behind Drake. Drake leaned more heavily against the door frame, but lost nothing of his attentiveness. He was not simply facing Jay, he was studying him.

Jason was the one to break the silence that had fell. "Can you even walk?" he asked.

Drake nodded. His eyebrows frowned for a tiny fraction of time. "Oracle sent you?" he repeated.

"Yeah," confirmed Jay. "If you ask why I'm not wearing fishnets, I will have to hit you. My car's down the street," he said, and did not miss the flickring in Drake's eyes, the other questions there brushed aside for now. Jason wondered what had changed for Drake not to hit first and ask questions later, or at least to keep the questioning up; for Drake to trust his word sort-of-immediately. It was not that Jay minded; it was easier to conduct business if there was no fight to wrap up before, but it was not the attitude he quite distinctly recalled from his last encounters with Robin, and with Nightwing, too.

They made it to the car, not very fast; Drake, as it was, could walk on his own but not on a distance as long as from the hotel to the car. Jason had to half carry him. Tam followed them, her arms wrapped around a dirty duffle bag. It was all they had, and Jay wondered how they had made it here. They were not even wearing winter clothes: Drake just had the suit, that Jason knew was not made for the snow, and Tam was wearing a pantsuit thing and sneakers. Both were visibly shivering.

Drake did not protest at being put in the back seat. Tam looked worried, and then relieved when Drake took the bag from her, and then worried again when she sat into the passenger seat and curled into a little ball to try to warm up. Jason shook emergency blankets out of a bag and gave them to Drake, then grabbed an extra jacket of his for Tam. She would drown in it but she would be warm. They did not talk much, aside from "grab this" and "take that".

When Jason started up the engine and made a U-turn to drive out of the town, Drake was already laying down and looking asleep in the back seat, bundled into the blankets, and Tam looked in equal parts terrified and exhausted.

"There's power bars in the compartment," he said, because the silence itself was terrified and it was ridiculous, really. Tam startled at his words, and looked at him before cautiously opening the glove compartment. He saw her stare at the knife stashed in it, before seeing the bars.

He unlocked and took the helmet off, shoved it in the open backpack behind the seat with one hand. The move did not rouse Drake. Jason looked at Tam out of the corner of his eye while she almost inhaled the bars. She was pointedly not looking at him. She was good-looking more than pretty, smooth dark skin and wide eyes. She looked a bit like the few surveillance pictures he had seen of Drake's last girlfriend, a normal girl. What had been her name already? Something with a Z, Zoe maybe. Drake had rather a bad record with girlfriends -he would be better off sticking with the superclone. Invulnerability and all that. Jason wondered where Tam came from, and how far she was involved.

It was not like they had several hours of iced-over road to go before finding a heated motel. Small-talk would have to do.

"So you're Tam. Got a last name with that, or should I make one up?"

She startled -again, and shit, where the hell had they been and what had they seen?-, glanced at Drake's prone form, looked scared, settled on glaring at Jason. It made Jason grin.

"And I don't know who you're supposed to be!" she replied. "What kind of name is Red Hood anyway? That's a red helmet you're wearing." Jason grinned wider. She had _guts_. He could come to really like her.

"Jason. Nice to meet you, Cheeky."

"Jay-... Fox, Tam Fox," she said, with an odd look on her pretty features.

He frowned. "You're Lucius' kid? What're you doing there?"

She made the little dance again, of glancing at Drake and back and scared and glaring. "How do you know- I still don't know who you're supposed to be!"

"Tch. And I can't tell you much until I know what you know. That's gonna be a fucking long drive if we keep this up."

The scenery passed behind the windows; white, white, and more white, the black of tree trunks, a lump of mail boxes at some point -no, really, who was living that much away from everything?- more white, white, white. At least is was not snowing - not yet.

"You have a last name to go with Jason?" she said. She looked like she was making the last bar last longer than the previous ones. 

"I need to know what you know first - we're back to the same square."

"I don't know anything! I was just supposed to find Tim Drake-Wayne for Wayne Entreprises because my father asked me too and I quit an internship in WE's russian branch for that, and suddenly the guy I was looking for turned out to be a dead ringer for an internationally researched art thief, and then there was Tim Drake in a costume bleeding out on my bed in my hotel room, and crazy assassins everywhere wanting Tim to lead them, and Tim doing so, and more crazy assassins trying to kill the first crazy assassins and going after us too!" She talked with her hands and looked more animated than he had seen so far, and less scared.

Jason mentally bypassed the internationally researched art thief part. "Wait what? -the names of the assassins, Tam."

"I don't - the first ones had an One Thousand And One Nights gone wrong feel, and one was called the Ghost. The others-" She curled back into a shivering ball. "They went by The Council of Spiders something."

Jason did not knew the second group, but _One Thousand And One Nights gone wrong_ described the League of Assassins pretty well. That was never, ever good. The probably most apt expression to describe the situation was a big _'What the fuck?'_ , with _fuck_ quickly running out of the room. He hit the wheel with his fist, clenched his jaw tight. He hated the bastards. Drake did not move in the back.

"What did the League, the first assassins, want with him exactly?" he asked.

"I don't know!"

"You don't know an awful lot."

"I was an hostage! I was there for Tim to do what they told him to!"

"Where's the League? How did you get here?"

"The... spiders-people things killed them." He watched her curl on herself again. She was shaking.

He tightened his jaw hard enough to hurt. Then sighed.

He reached behind her seat, came a bit too short - "Damn -here, hold the wheel straight" "Huh, okay" - found the water bottle he had been reaching for. Tam let go of the wheel as he took it back. He gave her the bottle. He had never been particularly good at comforting the witnesses. Most of the times, it was the costume that had made a difference. Here...

"Thanks", she said. She drank. More white passed.

When he glanced at her again, she was looking outside, slumped against the door, her arms tight around her, the bottle in one hand. He put on the heat a bit higher. A glance in the rearview mirror to the back seat showed that Drake looked to still be sleeping.

It was going to be a long drive.

*

He did not stop into the same motel as during the first part of the drive; it would have been, after all, too easy to track or recognize him from there. He managed to find another road rather soon after the ghost town, and a glance at the GPS' maps confirmed it would run more or less parallel to the larger road he had taken coming.

The next town big enough to have a motel came long after night had fallen. He suspected he was the place's only client for the week, aside from extra-conjugal times and dealings of the kind. The guy behind the counter certainly took his sweet time counting Jason's money before giving him a key. One room - it would be easier all around, more secure, especially if the spiders assassins were trailing them, and it was not like they would actually all sleep.

Tam jerked awake when Jason came back to the car, taking in her environment and checking if Drake was still there. "Where are we?"

Jason opened the back door. The lamplight illuminating the car park was not making Drake look any better. Jason had not seen him move since he had climbed in. "Motel - our room is the 5," he answered, giving her the key above the seat before carefully shaking Drake. "Wakey-wakey, it's pit stop time... Come on Drake, move it!"

He had seriously been expecting to be hit; waking people like them by shaking them was not the greatest idea. But instead of the hit Jay braced himself for, Drake sluggishly opened one eye and tried to sit up, and ended by leaning on Jason while Jay unlocked the seat belt.

He carried the younger teen into the room, suit hidden by the blankets around him. Tam had gone in already, switching lights and heat on. He deposited Drake on the bed further from the door and window, and went back out with Tam to grab their stuff. One final glance in the car to confirm he had not forgotten anything sensitive and they were back inside, too-thin curtains drawn and door locked at best it could be. Tam looked at him nervously when he donned the helmet again to sweep for bugs -there was not a single one. He then turned his attention on Drake. The fever was higher than earlier.

"How long's he been like this?" he asked. He noticed how uncomfortable the helmet made her.

"He was injured- it's been... about a week? And he has the fever since he fought the spider-people ah... I don't know when! Yesterday? Yesterday night? when we broke out of the compound."

Drake moved then, seemed to be more conscious of his surroundings. He managed to get a hand out of the blankets and grab Jason's jacket. "Ra's is in Gotham," he said. "We need..."

"We need nothing - it's not me you gotta talk to," answered Jason immediately. He felt cold sweat break on the back of his neck. He _hated_ the League, but Ra's gave him the creeps. He was mostly thankful that the exact reasons why were mixed in the burning blur between dying and getting kicked off a waterfall by Talia.

He shook off Drake's hand, before turning his back on them and grabbing his laptop. Booting it up took an eternity and a half. Finally, after a lighting-quick exchange of mails and verifications, a familiar green mask occupied the screen.

"Red Robin," the disembodied voice said. "Jay. And who is that?"

"Lucius' kid, Oracle," answered Jason. "No-one you need to concern yourself with for now, we're going to be out of you brains' hair in a minute anyway." Jason quickly taped on the keyboard. "Here's our current information - most importantly, Ra's is in Gotham."

The mask frowned, as much as a immobile mask could frown. Jason took the helmet off, quickly shoved it in the backpack it had came from. As Drake began to relay his information, Jay took Tam's arm. She had barely grabbed the jacket she was using that they were already out, door closed and locked behind them.

"Wait, wait! Why are we leaving?" she cried out.

"You don't need to hear what they're saying, and we need food. He's safer in this room than both of us out right now." The hilt of his knife was cool under his glove, under his coat.

"... What?" He watched her blink under the white-blue street light, their breaths making clouds. "Who are you people?!"

"Trust me, you're better off not knowing." He grabbed her arm again, moving toward a garish flashing sign signaling the still open diner on the other side of the street. She shook his hand off.

"Trust you? I don't even know who you are! I don't know who and what Tim-Alvin-Draper-Drake-Wayne is supposed to be either and I'm in the middle of it and I've seen enough assassins for the rest of my life and I'm scared!"

She dropped her head into her hands with a full body shudder.

"Sorry! So-sorry. I didn't mean to just... explode on you." She rubbed her nose and looked up everywhere but at him.

Before the multiverse... Jason did not even know how he would have reacted, because he would not have been in this situation. He would probably have tried to more or less off Drake and would not have been there talking to the girl. He missed Steph. She would have said something like that it was okay to be scared. Ra's was no laughing matter. Jason wondered how Drake had found him. He did not want the most obvious answer - _that Drake had gone looking for him_ \- to be the right one.

"You done?" he said. At her nod, he resumed going to the diner, her footsteps following his in the snow.

The diner was a bit greasy, and too hot. There was no mutt in the window, or a shotgun named 'Margie' here. They ordered soup and sandwiches to go, under the nonchalant stares of the patrons. They took coffee while they were there, at the counter. It was more stained water than coffee. Jason made a face and dumped more sugar in it. Tam mostly held it after the first sip. They did not talk.

They went back to the motel fifteen minutes later. Jason hoped it would have been enough time for Drake and Babs to have said and done all they had to. He would know all there would be to know soon enough, when the major leaguers' troubles would spill back into his business. He did not need to get concerned with it now, did not want to. He just had to get the Replacement and his girlfriend back to Gotham.

The door, and the tiny alarm system he had put on it, had not been disturbed. Drake was at the same place, eyes half-shut, and the laptop screen was blank. Jason and Tam put the food on the tiny table by the window.

"So, now that business is being taken care of, the fuck's going on with you?" Jason said.

Drake did not answer. Jason should have seen it coming really. He picked the laptop up, closed it, put it away, shrugged his jacket off.

"He has a wound the size of my hand on his stomach," answered Tam. She was opening the boxes of food, frowning at some before settling in the rickety chair with her pick.

"Tam..." said Drake. She looked at him, did the whole visual conversation again. Drake finally closed his eyes. Maybe it was a nod.

"I'd rather not bring a corpse back in Gotham, if His Batness doesn't mind." Jason reached for the blankets, peeled layer after layer. He found the catch for the cowl and cape easily, this one was fairly basic. The bandolier was not too hard either, even with the obvious modifications; obvious to him, at least. It was weird, the things he could remember by having seen and touched them once, when he had whole years of his life erased out of his head. The catches for the tunic were different though.  He felt them carefully. He did not put electrifying the suit past Drake.

Tam was eating, behind him. The light from the bedside lamps was both too harsh and not enough to see properly.

Drake's hands guided his to release the tunic's catch, his eyes still closed. It did look like there was an electric circuit-something there. Gloves and tunic got pushed aside with cape, bandolier and emergency blankets on the floor. Jason frowned at the tunic; it felt too light and too thin from what he remembered. Was the armor weaved into it even there? What the hell, why was he concerned, it was not even his suit, never had been.

Jason tugged the undershirt off, vaguely unnerved by Drake's passiveness... and then stopped. And swallowed. The little noises Tam made at his back stopped, replaced by a sharp breath. The undershirt went with the rest of the suit, and Jason made quick work of the boots and leggings and the jock and underwear under them. Drake hissed in a not good way at Jason's fingers on his ankle.

It was not pretty. The kid was black and blue and yellow-purple, and his ribs and hipbones were too visible. His right ankle looked swollen. The gauze taped from the edge of his ribs to his hips was stained brown. Jason carefully took it off. Some bits stayed stuck to ripped out stitches with flaking blood. Drake gritted his teeth.

"Tam. Black bag. There is a first aid kit in it."

He heard her rise and open the bag, heard her pause at the weapons in between the rolled clothes. Jason gingerly felt the lower ribs, not liking the colors spreading on them. He got a choked moan out of the kid for his trouble.

"Yup, broken alright," absently said Jason.

Tam gave him the first aid bag. "Can I..." she swallowed. "Can I be useful?"

Jay opened the bag, taking the pack of antiseptic swipes. "There should be an ice machine in the lobby," he said. He saw her nod out of the corner of his eye, then heard the door close.

"Just so you know, Drake, I think she's too good for you." The tiny move at the corner of Drake's mouth could have been a smile. He did not move further. Jason finished wiping the stitched wound - aside from the dry blood, about less than half of it was scarring already, and the rest was clean and did not seem to be infected. Small favors. So where was the fever coming from?

Drake had to have noticed his thoughts. "There is... The apparent leader of the Council of Spiders is a woman with deadly touch. Or skin. She did not touch me, but I think some of her poison reached me. Hence the fever." 

Jason carefully re-taped the wound. Taping the ribs would not be of much use, and the ugly bruising would fade away. "I'd be mighty interested in how you found the League and this Council, 'xcept I get the feeling I won't like your answer much." Drake licked his dry lips. That was as good an answer as any. "... Okay, whatever. Tam talked about a compound?"

The smile on Drake's feverish face would not have looked out of place on Jason's. "I blew every generator and computer system the League had." Rather, it would not have looked out of place on then-dead Jason's face. Jason raised an eyebrow at Drake's claim, but then, it was The Replacement, he had the brains to do it. It just seemed to be a much more pro-active stance than usually preached and practised by the Bats. Maybe there was hope there.

Drake started shivering. The door opened again then, Tam bringing in a bucket of ice cubes. She put it beside the first aid bag, and went into the bathroom. Jason opened the bed, jostling Drake to get the bed's blankets off from under him. Tam came back out with the plastic bag that must have been the garbage's one, and two miserable-looking towels. She put ice in the plastic bag, then wrapped one of the towels around, put it on Drake's ankle. Jason had got up, rummaging around his bag for something other than the suit that Drake could put on. Tee-shirt and boxers he would swim in would have to do. Jason gave Tam a large evidence bag from the first aid kit before forcing the too large clothes on Drake. The second ice pack went behind Drake's neck. He shivered harder, the violent trembling movements obviously hell on his battered body. Jason pulled the covers over him. He reached to the first aid bag again.

"N-no... painkillers," Drake managed to say.

Jason shrugged. If Drake did not want them, he was not about to force them down his throat. The kid would not dull his own reflexes as long as they would have to share quarters, probably with good reasons. Plus he had to be nauseous enough as it was; Jason was maybe a bastard, but he had never wished throwing up on broken ribs on anyone. "Your funeral. Think you can keep liquids down?" Jason got up from his crouch, did not bother waiting for Drake's answer. The container of soup was luck-warm. Drake took it, but did not uncurl from the shivering ball he had morphed into to drink it. It looked painful.

Jason shrugged, again. He sat at the table. There were a soggy-looking sandwich and a less soggy-looking sandwich untouched. Tam looked from him to Drake, before she took the box of food she had picked up and sat on the other bed. Jason picked the less soggy-looking sandwich first. By the time he had eaten it, the other one was convincingly impersonating a sponge.

It was strangely quiet, save for the low level background noise three persons in a room made unconsciously and the miserable wheezing sound of the heater. Drake had gave up on drinking the soup. He would need water. Jason wolfed down the other sandwich, not pausing long enough to taste it or have a good feel of the consistency. He nearly smiled at the idea of what Alfred would have said about the food. Tam made a disgusted face for him over the other container of soup.

He did not trust the quality of the tap water. He had bottled water in one of his bags. The chair gave off a crack when he stood up. He was well aware the two other occupants of the room tracked his movements. He took a bottle out, took the tee shirt he had been 'sleeping' in since he drove out from Gotham. He stretched, his neck popping. Tam would probably want something else to sleep in, unless they had clothes in the dirty duffle bag, which he doubted.

Said duffle was sitting at his right. Tam was at the table, putting her food wrappers back in the bag it had came in. Drake had not moved from his shivering heap, his eyes closed. Jason opened the duffle. There was Drake's staff and an incongruous couple of guns, their magazines pulled out, a crumpled map, a bluetooth and a switched off phone, but the main of the bag was filled by a box about the length of his arm. After a quick inspection -you never knew what was rigged to blow up- the lid opened when he flipped the lock open, and he pushed it back completely.

A bit of rock, large like his two hands side by side, was incased in hard foam material. Jason put bottle and clothing to the floor, carefully picking the stone up to have better light, tilting it toward the bedside lamp. A bat-like symbol, a very familiar one, was carved on it. He was no expert in these matters, but even he could see that it was old. Of course, there were some highly skilled people who could forge pieces like this one, he had had enough examples in hand, but this one did not feel like it.

His throat tightened. Maybe it was just the constant lack of sleep.

He replaced the rock in its casing and hauled the box up on the bed, lid open. Tam looked at him, then at the box, with wide eyes, Drake's soup container in hand.

"Drake. What is this?"

Drake opened his eyes. He did not seem to be able to focus at first, then he stared at the box, at the rock in it. He looked up, and his fever-bright eyes bored into Jason's.

"He's alive."

Jason almost did not catch it, hoarse as the kid's voice was, over the roaring of the blood in his ears. He stared back at Drake, failing to process his words. "What?"

Drake did not repeat himself. He looked at Jason a little while longer before closing his eyes again.

"You're crazy. He's dead. _You buried him_!"

Jason absently registered Tam hitting the wall and staring at him, the soup container clutched in her hands before her. Bruce was dead. All the Bruces were dead, along with the multiverse, and he had seen one die before him. Denial did not come into play, did not have to. It was done. It was a fact. There was no choice but to move on and go on and make new arrangements. The thought he had shut out since he had convinced himself he was truly back, truly there and now, came back in full force. _If Bruce was alive, none of that would be happening_. He would not be working with Oracle. He would not be seeing Batgirl - seeing Steph. He would not stay under the radar of the Dark Knight and the rest of his family. _If Bruce was alive, I'd still be an outcast._

 _If Bruce was still alive, if_ Batman _was still alive, would I, Jason Todd as I am now, even exist?_

 _Would he be proud of me?_

All it needed was a piece of rock with _his_ symbol on and Drake's claim.

He did not realize he had thrown the box over the beds to the other side of the room, the box hitting the door to the bathroom, and the rock falling on the dubious floor with a clatter. Tam yelped and threw her arms up to cover her face. Drake started, the move jarring him and making him double back in pain. Jason exhaled. Took another breath in. Then turned on his heels, opened the door, slamed it shut behind him.

He walked to the middle of the empty car park, the asphalt crunching under his footsteps, ice glistening in the sodium light. He wanted to hit something until it broke. He wanted to be hit because it did not hurt enough, and pain was easier. He wanted a cigarette, for the first time in a very long while. He wanted to run and to yell and for things to finally stop dropping shoes on him, pair after pair. It was like coming back from the multiverse all over again.

The number was on speed dial.

"{Hiya, tall, dark and gorgeous. How are you faring in the wild northwest?}"

He did not answer, just listened to her.

"{Jay? Jay, are you there?}"

She sounded concerned. He did not need concern.

"{Jason, what's wrong? Are you alright?}"

"Just-" He barely kept himself from breaking on the word. "Just talk." He began to feel the biting cold, his jacket left inside. "Steph."

*

When Jason went back inside, his fingers and nose numbed by the cold, Tam was half-slumped on the bed closest to the door, her eyes closed, and Drake was in the same position than earlier on the other bed. The bottle of water Jay had got out earlier was on the bedside between the two beds, unopened. His teeshirt was on his backpack instead of the floor. The food wrappers and containers were in the bag they had came from, on the table. The box's duffle bag was closed again, the box nowhere in sight.

Jason went to the bathroom. The water seemed to be burning to his hands, before sensation came prickly back. He closed and opened his fists several times in the water-filled sink, before scooping some water to his face. He kept his eyes closed, dried himself on his sleeve. He leaned on the sink, his forehead resting on the mirror's surface.

Neither of the other two occupants had stirred when he had opened the door, then closed it, crossed the room, opened the water.

He was feeling empty, angry, pulled apart, confused, again. It was easier not to think, not to feel. Hearing Steph's chatter had helped, but... -he needed sleep. Sleep that he would not get anytime soon, though. They had not put shifts in place, not that Drake was in any shape to keep watch. He did not knew the extend of Tam's training and how she woud react to an attack. He could not trust her with that.

He shut the meager light of the bathroom, went back into the main room. He shut off the lamp on Drake's side. The one on Tam's would suffice. He lightly felt the side of the kid's face. He was still too hot and sweaty, hair sticking to the skin. Jason went over to the bags, put the shirt on his backpack back inside. He would take the chair, hog a bit of mattress with Drake if needed; and if it came to that, he could meditate in the helmet. There was a kind of meditation-help program, mostly pulsating light and low sounds, in it.

He blinked. He did not ever remember using it, or even knowing it had been there before now. The helmet came from the missing time between the multiverse and meeting Steph in his former warehouse. He mentally added it to the pile of questions he would probably never have an answer to.

He taped Tam's shoulder, lightly. She startled awake, blinked.

"Lie down, it'll be more comfortable," he said gruffly.

"What? No, I..." she blinked harder, sat up. "I mean, you should take it, I'll just, huh..."

"Keep the bed," he said. He went over to the chair, spread his legs before him. His jacket would do as a pillow before the wood of the chair dug into his back and ass.

She was still sitting up. "Aren't you going to sleep?" she whispered.

"Can do it on the chair. I'll bother ninja-boy here if I need laying down. Go back to sleep, Tam."

She looked at him a little while longer before she nodded and went to the bathroom. He saw her hesitate at the feet of Drake's bed. He pretended to be asleep when she came back into the room, dissuading any discussion.  
   
It was going to be a long night.

*

Jason did not manage to get deeper than a light doze, keeping an ear out. He was wide awake as soon as Drake began to toss and turn after not having moved for hours. Jason did not move from the chair at first, as he doubted he would be happy to move. He should have laid down instead of torturing himself in the chair.

He forgot about not moving when Drake's tossing and turning changed into feverish half-coherent mumbles. He heard drawn-out vowels and what could have been names, but he tried to not think about that. Jason did not need to verify his temperature to know that Drake was delirious with fever. The tee shirt forced on him some hours ago was dark with sweat around the collar. Drake shivered harder as soon as Jason took the blankets he had twisted around off him.

"Drake! Drake, come on, wake up, wake up now!" 

He heard Tam move at his back - they had probably woke her up. Jason took the rest of the constricting coverings off, then scooped Drake up in a tangle of weakly struggling limbs. He needed to drop his temperature, now. He crossed the room to the bathroom in a few steps, roughly put Drake in the shower before standing back up to switch the light on. Drake would probably have some bruises from that. Jay took his sweater and tee-shirts off before dropping to his knees to Drake's side, holding him mostly upright. The shower head being fixed overhead, he would have to keep him under the spray.

Drake did not react to the water hitting his skin and soaking his clothes, at first. Jason jerked in response to the too cold water, but did not move further. He could catch some of Drake's words now - "...not... obin... he said- he said Ra's has..."- for all the sense they made, vowels drawn out into moans and sibilants sounds. He dragged Drake's wet hair away from his face, his other arm around the kid's chest, trying to held him up. His skin was still too hot, made all the more so by the contrast with the icily cold spray.

Tam appeared at the door. Jason's jeans got heavier from the water they were absorbing, and he was pretty sure his fingers had gone numb.

Drake began to shake, the moans and incoherent words turning into whimpers. He blinked.

"Wha... whazzon..."

"It's okay, it's alright, stay under the spray..."

"Jay... Jason?"

"Yeah, that's me, I'm here-"

" 'missed you...Watched you... watched you all the nights I could disappear... Izzat really you?" Drake trying to blink water out of his eyes and look up at Jason should never have looked this pathetically cute.

"Yeah, it's really me." Jason reached for the tap. Drake was at least coherent and aware, even if what he was spouting did not made much sense. His temperature had hopefully gone down enough to cut the whole delirious with fever shtick.

"It wasn't you... before. You're back?" Then maybe he was spouting sense. Jason frowned.

"What?"

"'t's you, 't's really you... 'm glad you're back." They were both shivering now, with the water cut off, both equally soaked. Drake had awkwardly shuffled around, his face pressed against Jason's chest.

"Tim, what the hell are you talking about?"

He did not answer, of course - that would have been too easy. Jason picked him up again, and Drake tried to hold on to him with strengthless limbs. Tam had picked the towels she had transformed in cold compresses earlier; they were damp, but it would be enough to dry Tim some before putting him back into bed.

He tried to help when Jason took the soaked shirt and boxers off.

"Stop," he growled, and Tim's head just fell back into the pillow. Tam's bed pillow, not the other one. They would use the blankets from the other, but the rest of the bedding was distinctly damp. He put Tim into a dry tee shirt before he got up and went to retrieve the tee shirt and sweater he had left in the bathroom. The heater was still clicking feebly, not enough to make the air inside forget that it was freezing, out.

There was a large puddle around the shower. His clothes were half in it. He took them out, put them on the chair in the other room. He did not have much hope they would be dry by the time they left in the morning. Tam had found a plastic cup, and was helping Tim drink before he passed out again. Seeing the way he was sluggishly blinking, it would not be long.

Jason took dry clothes for himself, before he took the blankets from the other bed and spread them on Tam and Drake.

"Scoot over," he told them. He laid in between the two layers of covers, fully clothed, in the place they left him on the edge. He was facing Tim's back and the door, Tam's face hidden by Drake's damp hair and the blankets.

He should have changed Tim's bandages. He could feel the goose-bumps on his arms, under the layers of clothing. He wrapped his arms around his midsection and scooted closed to Tim who was giving off heat like he wanted to challenge Clark in the heat-giving department.

Drake was still shuddering. He needed medical treatment, not just first aid. Thompson's brand new clinic was open around the clock, but knowing when Leslie actually was in was trickier. He would have to call Babs on the road. If he had taken a fucking jet the question would not have to be asked - no, taking sort of a not break had felt pretty good. He would miss the old bunch of scraps on wheel when back in Gotham, not that he would find much utility to an old pickup in the city.

If he pushed it, Jason thought around a yawn and a shudder of his own, they could be in Gotham by the early hours of the day after. They would need to leave the motel very soon. He would need to drive the whole day with as little pauses as he could get away with, and then a good part of the night. Jason needed all the sleep he could get as of now, if he could get any warmer, if he could sleep at all.

He was taking them home.

*


End file.
